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Speaking of the relationship between the books and the games, Glukhovsky said that he considers all of them “his babies”.

“And Metro 2035 the novel brings the plot lines from Metro books and games together, and characters from the books and the games meet there. So it’s crowning in a way all the outlets of this saga,” he continued.

The author said he’d been a big fan of 4A Games since the team worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and had nothing but praise for the team’s adaptations.

“Games, films and books are all different arts. You can’t simply turn book into a film or a game, cause games and films play by their own rules. There’s always a ‘translation’ required, a translation to a new medium,” he said.

“In the entire Metro 2033 the book, Artyom, the main character, only kills one person. Now – when you adapt this into a 3D survival horror shooter, that one kill doesn’t seem to be sufficient, does it?

“4A Games, who created the Metro games, did an amazing job translating my books into games. They treated the original content with much love and respect. And we coincide in our perception of what a decent Apocalypse should look like.

“I didn’t expect Metro games to be a sentence-by-sentence repetition of the novels. I wanted guys to create an independent masterpiece based on my stories. And they did. That’s a rule of life: work with talented individuals and grant them creative freedom – instead of working with idiots and controlling every step they make.”

The author has no problems with the possibility of multiple endings and deviations from the canon of the Metro novels, either.

“I am very much FOR interactivity, uncertainty, variability and unpredictabilty,” he said.

“I suggested the hidden ‘karma points’ moral choices system for the first Metro game, and I suggested we allow the ‘moral player’ to avert the catastrophe, described in the book. When you’re Artyom, you should be able to change your destiny – and that of the world.”

Glukhovsky also said he has no plans to write a sequel to Futu.re, his latest novel, but again hinted the story may continue in other media. Makes you wonder what else 4A Games may be working on with its expanded team, doesn’t it?

Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light are both available in updated form for current-gen hardware, by the way.

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